


The John Sheppard Guide to ADHD and Other Brain Quirks

by pebbles1971



Series: Older and Wiser [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Neurodiversity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 15:10:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18013250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pebbles1971/pseuds/pebbles1971
Summary: John's POV on being neurodivergent





	The John Sheppard Guide to ADHD and Other Brain Quirks

**Author's Note:**

> This won't make any sense if you haven't read Spectrum and Epiphany. I just wanted to give a tiny window into John's POV and his neurodivergent traits.
> 
> Spoilers for S1 Ep13 Hot Zone, in which John's ADHD traits are at their most obvious, but if you look carefully they're everywhere, particularly ADHD but the sensory stuff and communication issues are observable.

  1. **Find your neurotype and own it**



It was a bitter thing, how John found out there was a possible word for his much-hidden quirks. Getting a literal Dear John message from the love of his life was crushing enough, but hearing right in the middle that Rodney didn’t appreciate him covering up the neurodivergent traits he didn’t even know he had?

That was a headfuck.

The Satedans called them “brain quirks” and saw it more as a constellation with many possible permutations. The Athosians just called people like him and Rodney “fey”, in a way that was honoured rather than suspected. John had by now settled on “neurodivergent” or ND, because it was easier than pinning it down to a diagnosis when he wasn’t sure if he wanted a diagnosis – to understand his differences, yes, to see it as something medical or labelling? He wasn’t sure.

John had looked into it straight after Rodney’s message, when he was still reeling from the loss. But he also knew it was high time he got kicked up the ass, and dammit he was going to make it count for something. He couldn’t really carry on as he was, his laid-back laziness and his sarcastic put-downs covering up everything that he really was.

  1. **Stop trying to act neurotypical**



Rodney had eloquently pointed out to him that passing for something he wasn’t gave him “access to a whole world of things you probably don’t enjoy all that much”. That was so true it hurt. He performed his role well, but nothing of his life was really him, save the one relationship he had spectacularly fucked up.

Thank god for second chances.

He still didn’t know what exactly he was. ADHD featured heavily, but then there were the sensory differences associated with autism and some communication issues as well. He was more like Rodney, who was straight down the line autistic, than people might think, even though he hid it better.

“Better”, like hiding being neurodivergent was a good thing. Like acting “normal”, the way he had been carefully taught, somehow made him a better person than someone who was more authentic. Yeah, he knew what a load of bullshit that was, and Rodney had told him straight – trying to be someone he wasn’t had turned him into an asshole. He knew it was true.

That, of course, was why he was so mean to Rodney, because in Rodney he saw everything he had been told not to be, and Rodney didn’t even try to hide it.

Didn’t try to hide the fact that he couldn’t really be bothered to make nice with people, or that he found a lot of communication hard, or that he liked stupid sci-fi or could remember phone numbers without even thinking about it. And a thousand other things that reminded John uncomfortably of who he really was.

  1. **Don’t be afraid to explore the ways you react differently to the world**



So much discovering. All the sensory stuff, how he responds to touch and smell and taste. How the numbers 2,4,8,16 have a metallic taste, how he sees number lines that help him do maths effortlessly. How the texture of beans is almost painful.

How kinks may not mean what people assume. When Rodney ties him up, or wraps him up, or holds him down, and when he does the same back to Rodney, it’s nothing to do with giving up control and everything to do with the sensory joy of _pressure_. His fascination with Nancy’s silk was not for submission, or feminisation but _sensation._

Rodney’s latest gift, a man’s black silk dressing gown, ticked every box that Nancy’s blue one had done and suited him far better.

There are good feels and he needs them to ground, just like the way he fiddles with the back of his hair because the sensation gives him comfort, and there are bad feels, like the sensation of dry fingertips over nylon fleece, that make him want to crawl out of his skin.

People think John doesn’t like touch, but it’s not that, it’s just that touch is a _lot_. A sensory deluge that is perfect at the right time but torture if it’s casual.

It took a long time for John to realise not everyone experiences things in the same way. That he wasn’t just overreacting to the same experiences everyone has.

  1. **Discover your limitations and work round them**



When he went surfing after losing Atlantis, determined to learn to be calm and centred and zen-like, he learned something he didn’t really want to know about himself. Oh, in the water, wrapped up in the thrill and physicality of those perfect waves, he could lose hours and it was the purest form of focus he could achieve that wasn’t flying, but off the water he was bored out of his mind, and could not relax.

ADHD has two settings, unfocussed or hyperfocussed, not much in between, and you don’t get to choose which. This is how he could do a PhD and do it well, albeit by leaving everything late and then living, eating and breathing it for that last year, but why he filed his tax return late every year and missed out on anything that required extra paperwork.

And then there’s the impulsivity thing. Oh, god, that thing that got him a black mark in Afghanistan and made him break quarantine on Atlantis, an act that could have killed everyone in the mess, including Teyla. Apparently, it’s not unusual for people with ADHD to have a strong sense of right or fairness and to act on that sense more quickly than others do, but sometimes without considering all the consequences.

In Afghanistan he was driven by his sense of what’s right, but also his sense of needing to do _something_ and his inability to stop himself when unknown forces were driving him forward _._ In the quarantine, he had to admit he was motivated equally by his inability to stay still in a locked room, or rather, the impulse to get out of there was so strong it overrode anything else.

He found out in Australia that he was the sort of person to be able to look at a beautiful sunset for less than sixty seconds, then he would wonder what to do next, or more likely find that his hands and feet had taken him into the next thing without him even noticing. He bought a cheap guitar and strummed through a few songs but was too distracted to learn anything new. Looking back, that was the same handful of songs he’d managed to scrape together over two decades of erratic playing.

He had wanted to slow down and have a long time out to relax and reflect, but he was going out of his mind.

He was nearly disappointed in himself, but reminded himself _maybe that’s just who I am._ Maybe it would be better to learn who he was than carry on trying to be something else entirely.

  1. **Discover your talents and work with them**



Then he went to Somalia and worked for MSF, discovering he could focus better under the influence of adrenaline and then he really got shit done, which also explained why someone with ADHD had been a passably good military commander, (the other reason being an XO called Evan Lorne). In Somalia he also discovered that choppers fly better when someone hasn’t shot off the tail rota, that he’s a good enough pilot to save his own life, but only just. And that head injuries _really_ suck.

But hey, it all worked out in the end and he got Rodney back, and he got Atlantis back.

Priya Mirchandani, the Atlantis Mission Leader after Woolsey and before Teyla, said she quickly learned that John could accomplish astonishing feats under great pressure and nothing at all under no pressure. It wasn’t that he didn’t _like_ doing boring things, he simply _couldn’t_ , his brain refused to engage. He had to make paperwork an extreme sport or it just didn’t get done. Mostly, she suggested, he should just let his PA organise him, but of course that required John to be sufficiently organised to hand over work to someone else. It took a few months for Declan Healey, his amazing PA, to figure out how to prize work off John and get it in order _before_ John sat on it for weeks, waiting for it to become explosive and therefore interesting enough for him to engage with.

But John wasn’t lazy, he now realised. He had _become_ lazy, but that was as much about hiding as it was about ADHD. He was a hard worker and clever too. The laziness had come out of a combination of how confused he was by the inconsistency of his performance, and how badly the world treated try-hard geeks. But when Rodney had effectively told him to go to hell, John realised here was someone and something worth working his ass off for.

John had gone to work on himself, and on his career. Some might say he set fire to his career by authoring the incendiary report that got the US military out of Atlantis, but it was one of the pieces of work he was most proud of. He had employed his brain and his ethics and slogged at it like he had with his PhD, night and day, because it mattered enough for him to hyperfocus on it like nothing he had done for a long time. He wrote it in that last few months as Military Commander of Atlantis when he was missing Rodney so much, he thought his heart might fall out of his chest. It just about kept him distracted from pain like he had never felt.

The report had put a lot of things right, put Atlantis on track, even though he had to let go of her, his other great love, to do right by her.

And now he had Atlantis _and_ he had Rodney, plus the people around him knew he was neurodivergent and took it into account. He could be himself and not hide his quirks. He could play to his strengths, be a big old geek, stand up and walk around in meetings, fly into space in a puddlejumper when he was going nuts and nobody would judge him for it.

His life was perfect. He was fully blessed.


End file.
